Crispy Sweet Potato Oven Fries Recipe

I've been a little MIA lately. My family is visiting, and we had quite an experience during Hurricane Irene. My family rented a condo on the beach, so they all joined in my house during the hurricane. There were five people sleeping in Baby T's room. It was a huge slumber party.

Now that the festivities have died down, I'm back in my routine. But I ran out of eggs.

I've been eating eggs for breakfast almost every day since I've been on the South Beach Diet, and since I'm on Phase II of the diet, I decided yesterday to have oatmeal instead. Although it filled me up, I felt out of sorts until I got some protein in my stomach.

Since I still haven't bought eggs, today I decided to cook up some sweet potato fries. My favorite go-to recipe book is the America's Test Kitchen cookbook. I referenced that, but there were no recipes for sweet potato fries. Onto the internet I went. I found a recipe for sweet potato fries from Cook's Illustrated on the Riverland Farm website.

I made it, with a few tweaks. Oh, and a dipping sauce. And some sausage. It was an amazing breakfast.

Wordless Wednesday: New Sibling Bonding (in Watercolor Portraits)

The Wordless Wednesday theme at Natural Parents Network this week is New Sibling Bonding. There is nothing sweeter than new siblings gazing into each other's eyes. The gentleness that older siblings have when they see their baby brother or sister for the first time is impressive (when they're not trying to poke out baby's eyes, that is).

I missed the deadline to put my pics on their site, but you can check out all of the beautiful pics on their website. And I decided to include mine in my own #WW post this week. But instead of giving you the photographs, I'm showing you the watercolor portraits I painted from the photos.

My nephews, L and A

My babies: Little M and Baby T

I was supposed to post this yesterday, but I'm a little behind. My WW post for this week is coming later today. 

I've been on the South Beach Diet for a week and a half, and I've already lost 9 pounds. (Yay!!) I realize that this quick weight loss isn't the healthiest, but I do feel like I had a problem with sugar and possible candida overgrowth in my digestive tract, and I think I really needed to cut out the sugar to get these results.

I had huge sugar cravings before starting the diet, and they have largely disappeared. But at night, after dinner, when I'm sitting around on the couch, I still miss my dessert.

The South Beach Diet recommends a ricotta creme recipe, which is basically ricotta, cinnamon, and vanilla. But you're supposed to use part-skim ricotta, which is dry and gross.

I have a giant, Costco-sized cottage cheese, so I developed my own recipe. (After making it, I realized my Land O' Lakes cottage cheese is filled with all kinds of gross preservatives, so I have to switch to a different brand, but you can make this recipe with any brand. It's filling, it has protein, and it satisfies your cravings for sweets without filling your bloodstream with glucose.

Cottage Cheese Diet Dessert Recipe

It's almost too easy.
Mix together 1/2 to 1 cup of cottage cheese, 1 tablespoon of peanut butter, a teeny-tiny dash of vanilla, a dash of some kind of sweetener (I've been using a tiny sprinkle of stevia) and an ample sprinkling of cinnamon. Mix mix mix (I mix with a fork to break up some of the curds) and eat.

Sleep Training Part IV—The Data Behind the Philosophy

According to an article called “Sleep Disorders and Sleep Problems in Childhood,” written by C. Carolyn Thiedke, M.D., and published in American Family Physician, sleep behaviors are some of the most discussed concerns between parents and pediatricians. She makes a distinction between sleep disorders and sleep problems, however. Thiedke defines a sleep disorder as one “confirmed by reproducible findings in a sleep laboratory” and a sleep problem as “a sleep pattern that is unsatisfactory to the parents, child or physician.”

Sleep Training Part III – A Momentary Lapse of Reason

I’ve been talking about how I’m not really into sleep training, and I think it’s more important to be responsive to your baby than to establish a strict routine or let baby cry it out. And in my last post, I mentioned that I’m confident that Little M will eventually sleep through the night without having to resort to crying it out.

And I am.

But it’s easy to doubt myself, which is what I did the other night.

Sleep Training Part II – Then and Now

Baby T asleep on Big T's shoulder

Here’s my history with sleep and Baby T. You’ve probably heard it all before. He woke up often, especially between three and seven months. Sometimes he was waking every 20 minutes. I soothed him to sleep every time; I nursed him to sleep, rocked him to sleep, or wore him in a sling or a wrap to get him to sleep. Even in the middle of the night.

I read Elizabeth Pantley’s “No-Cry Sleep Solution,” and it made a lot of sense. There are people who say that it’s too complicated or it didn’t work for them. But I secretly think that the No-Cry Sleep Solution isn’t anything different than what you would do with a little common sense. It’s just a way to gradually (and she stresses gradually) wean your child off of being rocked, nursed, or worn to sleep. And eventually, they do gradually wean off of it.

But I was never alert enough at night to really try the steps in the “No-Cry Sleep Solution.” I just went back to the old standby: nursing, and if that didn’t get Baby T back to sleep, then rocking or babywearing did.

Inspiration Thursday: The Versatile Blogger Award

Thanks so much to one of my newest followers, Patricia of Lemondrops Dream Too, for awarding me the Versatile Blogger Award! It's inspiring to know that I inspire other people. I spend so much time stalking other people's blogs that sometimes it's a relief to know that other people are stalking mine, too!